Chapter 10 - BENEATH THE WHITE STONES
Police searched the North Church cemetery with ground-penetrating radar.
The white gravel appeared in three sections.
Only one lay near fresh tire tracks.
A cadaver dog alerted beside an unused family plot owned by Malcolm Reeves.
Excavators removed the first layer of dirt.
They struck wood.
Claire was found inside a reinforced burial box six feet underground.
The air tube had been partially blocked by mud.
She was unconscious but alive.
Paramedics intubated her on the grass.
I held her hand while they loaded her into the ambulance.
Her fingers tightened around mine once.
Enough to tell me she knew I was there.
Malcolm Reeves was arrested at his office.
Police found emergency guardianship petitions prepared for me, Claire, and three other women.
Each petition had supporting psychiatric reports signed by Price.
Each listed Diane as temporary financial custodian.
Reeves denied knowing about the kidnappings.
Then investigators recovered messages from his encrypted phone.
He chose the cemetery.
He ordered the burial box.
He calculated how much air Claire needed to survive long enough for me to sign.
The conspiracy was no longer hidden behind family excuses.
It was organized.
Profitable.
Repeated.
Dr. Price survived the gunshot.
In exchange for reduced charges, he agreed to testify.
He told police Diane was the leader.
Reeves handled law.
Price handled medicine.
Mark handled surveillance and physical control.
Diane selected victims and kept trophies inside the blue sewing tin.
The third license belonged to Sarah Nolan.
Price also revealed that Diane had planned to stage my death after obtaining custody of my baby.
She intended to claim I fled during a psychotic episode.
Mark would become the grieving father.
Diane would raise the child.
My daughter would inherit my grandmother’s remaining investments at age eighteen.
Diane planned to control them until then.
Everything came back to ownership.
Homes.
Money.
Children.
People.
To Diane, love meant possession.
Claire woke the next afternoon.
She remembered Mark meeting her at the airport.
He hugged her.
He cried.
He said I had hurt myself.
Then he gave her water in the car.
She woke inside Price’s clinic.
Diane stood over her with the quilting needle.
“She said you were ungrateful,” Claire whispered.
I sat beside the hospital bed.
“She says that about everyone who escapes.”
Claire began crying.
“I believed her stories about you.”
“So did I.”
“Why didn’t you tell me?”
“Because I was ashamed.”
She squeezed my hand.
“That shame belongs to them.”
The sentence stayed with me.
Later, Owen visited with another recovered recording.
It came from Mark’s phone.
Recorded one week before the attack.
Mark begged Diane not to involve the baby.
For a moment, hope rose inside me.
Then his next words played.
“Wait until Natalie gives birth. A newborn is easier to explain than a miscarriage.”
My husband had not tried to save our child.
He had only suggested delaying the crime.
Owen stopped the recording.
“There’s something else.”
May you like
Police had tested the pregnancy.
Mark was not the biological father.
